Making music a possibility for every child — $2.3 million in free lessons and counting
Astrid Hepner knew little of Hamilton's rich musical heritage when she moved here in 2005 from New York City with her husband Darcy and their two-year-old daughter Camilla. Hamilton was Darcy's hometown and he was taking a new job teaching in the faculty of music at Mohawk College.
The move represented a huge lifestyle change for the couple, who had established deep roots in the New York music scene - Darcy as a successful saxophonist and Astrid as executive assistant to the president of Blue Note Records, one of the world's most prestigious jazz labels.
Compared to the hubbub of Manhattan, Hamilton seemed like a good place to settle down, buy a house with a backyard and raise a family.
It didn't take long, however, for Astrid, in particular, to become restless. She wanted to contribute to her new hometown by helping educate and inspire inner-city youth through music, especially children her daughter's age who otherwise would never have a chance to even pick up and hold a musical instrument.
In 2008, they formed the Hamilton Music Collective (HMC), a non-profit with Astrid as CEO and president, and Darcy the artistic director. The goal was to harness the local musical community and use it to reach out into the city's neediest schools.
Over the next 15 years, the Collective would sponsor an estimated $2.3 million in free musical lessons for some 9,000 elementary-aged children through its An Instrument For Every Child (AIFEC) program, and distribute more than $230,000 in musical instruments to 16 schools, three Boys and Girls Club locations. and three city recreation centres. With the help of the Voortman Foundation, it would convert an old industrial building into a key cultural centre and music venue called The Gasworks (141 Park St. N., just north of Cannon).
The program employs 21 local musicians as instructors and also holds a summer camp with bursaries and subsidies available to one-third of the participants.
By any measure, AIFEC has become an extraordinary success, gaining accolades from a variety of top-flight musicians including multiple Grammy winning saxophonist Tom Scott, Blood, Sweat and Tears singer David Clayton Thomas and veteran Canadian rocker Kim Mitchell.
AIFEC also received an early endorsement by Laurel Trainor, a professor of psychology and director of the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind, who noted active participation in music not only benefits individual children, but leads to greater social cooperation and sense of community."
And yes, the HMC has staged countless concerts and fundraisers to keep the program going, including a gala 15th anniversary celebration being held Thursday, June 8, under a large tent behind the Gasworks, with entertainment by The Darcy Hepner R&B All Stars, and food and drink provided by The Other Bird. Tickets are $200, including a $100 charitable tax receipt, available through the hamiltonmusiccollective.ca website.
With the help of local businessmen (and music enthusiasts) such as Bob Miller, Larry Paikin and Paul Lloyd (who committed $125,000 as the initial seed money for AIFEC), Astrid became a tireless and able fundraiser for the program.
She now looks back on the early days of the Hamilton Music Collective with some amazement.
I was just so happy to get out of New York at that point and so happy to have time with my daughter," she says about the move to Hamilton. I wanted to be a mother and spend time on the playground. I happily did that for two years and then I said What now?'"
The Hamilton Music Collective was launched in 2008 with a photo exhibit she helped put together in 2008 called Portraits of Sound." The exhibit also became Astrid's introduction to Hamilton's musical heritage.
She invited a friend - renowned New York jazz photography Jimmy Katz - to come to town and photograph some of Hamilton's top musicians, including Jackie Washington, Brian Griffith, Harrison Kennedy, Boris Brott, Ian Thomas, Diana Panton and Tom Wilson. The portraits now hang on the walls of the Gasworks.
I cold-called every musician," Astrid says. Everybody showed up on a super-tight schedule. It was such an amazing experience. That was really the way that I was introduced to the Hamilton music scene and realized there was so much going on here. We harnessed all that great energy."
At the same time, Darcy had formed a jazz orchestra that was drawing strong crowds with regular performances at the Corktown Pub. Darcy invited guest players from New York's famous Vanguard Jazz Orchestra to join in. They old the Hepners about the successful educational program they had been running in New York. That caught Astrid's attention.
With the help of a grant from the Hamilton Community Foundation, HMC teamed up with Mohawk College to launch a similar initiative called Jazz in the Hubs," bringing bands, comprised of professional musicians and Mohawk students, to perform interactive concerts and workshops at inner-city schools.
Meanwhile, Astrid learned of a program in her native Germany in which professional musicians worked with elementary schools to provide musical instruments and instruction to children at a very early age.
Astrid used the German example as a blue print for An Instrument for Every Child which was started in Hamilton as a pilot project in 2010 at King George Elementary School for students in Grades 1 to 4.
The long-term vision for the program was to have it grow, so that every child in Hamilton would have the opportunity to learn to play a musical instrument regardless of their socio-economic circumstances." Astrid says.
And grow it did. By 2013 five inner-city schools were involved and local rock musician Tom Wilson was promoting a series of benefit concerts at Melrose
United Church that would raise $100,000 for AIFEC. More schools would be added almost every year.
In 2015, the headquarters of the Hamilton Music Collective and AIFEC moved from the Hepner's west Mountain home to the Gasworks with the generous and continuing support of the Voortman Foundation.
More funding would arrive from organizations like TD Bank, MARZ Homes, the City of Hamilton, Incite Foundation for the Arts, the Hamilton Golf and Country Club Foundation and the Ontario Trillium Foundation. Partnerships were formed with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hamilton Boys and Girls Clubs, and McMaster University's Institute for Music and the Mind. Nick Nurse, former coach of the Toronto Raptors, pledged support along with Max Kerman, lead singer of Hamilton's Juno-winning rock band Arkells.
Nancy Minotti, a music teacher at Cathy Wever Elementary School on Wentworth Street North, has personally witnessed the impact AIFEC has had.
The program has had a huge effect on the musical development of our students," says Minotti who has been involved with AIFEC for 12 years. I've seen the growth in the students. They study with the AIFEC teachers until the end of Grade 4. Once they finish the AIFEC program, they're in my hands. I can say that we now have probably one of the strongest concert bands in the inner-city and that is a result them having that access to musical lessons and instruments at a very young age.
The impact is tremendous. The instructors are very open and caring with the students, definitely fostering that love of music, regardless of whether the students carry on with it ... It is therapeutic for their emotional well-being, an intuitive feel-good thing."